


Stray Thoughts on Love for Valentine's

by dreamraven



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Explicit Language, M/M, toxic masculinity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 13:10:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13682346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamraven/pseuds/dreamraven
Summary: Dean knows what love really is and what it isn't. No one's going to change his mind. Not even a certain blue-eyed angel.





	Stray Thoughts on Love for Valentine's

True love is for family and no one else. It has nothing to do with passion or sex. A man’s love is his duty, his responsibility, his to protect, and his to avenge if necessary. Real love isn’t flowers and rainbows. Real love is blood and fists; real love is sacrifice. It’s keeping your guns loaded and knives within reach. It’s staying vigilant because at any second you can lose that love, lose your family.

His father taught him how to be a man and how to love when he was four years old, when he dumped his baby brother in his arms with a slurred, “He’s yours now, take care of him,” before passing out cold on the bathroom floor.

Dean did take care of him. Dean does and Dean always will because Sam is his first and truest love. Sam is more than his brother and his love for Sam is an unyielding force; it’s rooted down deep in his bones, in his very DNA. It’s the snarling rage of a predator when something gets too close to her cubs, the broken heart howl when it’s lost.

Dean has learned that real love doesn’t just break your heart; it breaks every part of you. It grinds you down, rubs you raw, spits you out, and leaves you in a broken twisted heap on the floor. This isn’t a lesson his father taught him though. Nope, he learned this lesson all on his own. Learned it the hard way, as he watched his brother hurting, watched him die, and bleed and cry. He learned it standing over the graves of all the people he failed over the years. He learned it in the Pit and on the rack, he learned it carving up souls.

The responsibility of love is a heavy burden and you can’t just spread that around for everyone. He tried to be family for Lisa and Ben. He didn’t know what he was doing, but he went along with it anyway- trying to fake it to make it. Hell, he went the whole nine yards: grinned till the corners of his mouth ached, kept that forced twinkle in his eye, walked hand-in-hand into the sunset, pressed soft kisses to foreheads before bed, Church on Sundays and barbeques in the backyard, all of it. But hard as he tried, he never quite made it; never quite managed to love them.   

And on those long, cold nights when the weight of love doesn’t let him sleep he has another tried and true method picked up from his old man to get him through-slow, draining swallows from a bottle of Jack in a darkened room. Sam can hate their father; judge him, but Dean knows why he was the way he was. He knows it was love.

As for that other kind of love, the so-called falling kind, that’s just hormones and sweaty bodies pressed together in the sheets. Dean is well acquainted with that kind of love, he calls it by its true name. Its true name is lust. Lust plain and simple, lust sweet and delicious. It’s an itch that needs to be scratched, and he is always more than happy to scratch it. And once scratched…well… once scratched it doesn’t itch anymore.

He’s a man and he has needs like any man. Indulging in pleasures when able is a necessary part of the life. It’s something to take the edge off, a little splash of color in the repetitive grey slog of dusty hotel rooms, unending highways, and death. Girls are oh-so-pretty and soft. He likes the feel of them in his hands, likes the way they move and moan underneath him. He likes to rescue them from the monsters hiding in the dark, fuck them good, and flash a sweet smile on the way out the door. He’s honest about it at least. He doesn’t dress it up and pretend it’s something more. He gives them what they want and takes what he needs. Everyone’s happy in the morning.

…Aren’t they? ...Isn’t he?

As for falling in love for real, he doesn’t believe in it. He doesn’t have time for that shit. Doesn’t need it. Doesn’t want it. Anyone who tries to say any different is probably selling something and can fuck right off.

So no. He is not, and no way in hell will he ever fall in love with that constant pain-in-his-side angel Castiel. He can never…never, ever love him like that.

Sometimes he forgets though. Sometimes when he’s watching the angel across the room, he thinks for a second that maybe, just maybe he could. In those moments, he’ll close his eyes tight and push it away because Cas is family. That’s more important than anything else-that’s true love.

 

**Author's Note:**

> First time posting. Just something short for Valentine's to test it out. I'm still trying to figure out tagging, etc... Probably lots of mistakes, so feedback is always appreciated ;)


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